Working the Permanent Shift

This is my one and only encounter that I can recall, but it still
remains with me to this day. Back in 1986 I had moved from Western
Pennsylvania to Tucson, Arizona to marry my fiancé. I found a job as an
Assistant Manager for Walgreens drugstore. The setup they had at the
time was a Manager, Executive Assistant Manager and Assistant Manager;
the latter being me!

The Executive Asst. Manager was an older gentleman, in his late 50s,
a Mr. Allison. We would do split shifts on Sunday--he would work in the
morning and I would work in the evening until closing. Unfortunately,
one Saturday just before the end of the year, I hurt my back badly and
was unable to go to work Sunday. My fiancé called Mr. Allison and told
him I would be unable to work and he said that would be all right, he
would work my shift as well as his own. Sad to say, that evening in the
back stockroom, Mr. Allison had a massive coronary and died on the spot.

Aside from the guilt I felt long afterwards, I never got the
impression that Mr. Allison had left something of himself behind; that
is, until one evening when I was taking a break in the employee break
room and I could hear someone working in the stockroom. We had a long
conveyor belt that we would put our new stock on and roll it along as
each box was checked and emptied. The sound puzzled me because I had all
of my people working in the front of the store and there shouldn't have
been anyone in the stock room. So, getting ready to question whoever was
in the stockroom, I went in and found it to be completely empty. There
was no one there and the conveyor belt, which I had heard moving only
seconds before, was empty and unmoving. I merely put it down to hearing
things or dismissing it as the sound of our large stockroom delivery
door rattling in the wind as it sometimes did.

I didn't think much about the incident until a few days later when I
was talking to one of the employees in the breakroom. Her name was
Shirley and she was not one to make things up, she was a very serious
person. But she told me that she had heard someone in the stockroom that
morning moving boxes on the conveyor belt, which was where Mr. Allison
had been working when he had died. But when Shirley investigated the
noises, she found the room to be just as empty as I had. And if someone
had left the stockroom they would have gone right by the breakroom and
Shirley had seen no one during her experience.

Shirley was the only one to my knowledge that had shared my strange
experience. If it had happened to any one else, they never told me about
it. Today, the place where Walgreens used to be has been completely
renovated and a new business has been in there for several years. I
drive by this place very often and there are some shops in this plaza
that my wife and I frequent. Every time I walk past the location of my
former employment, I wonder if anyone has experienced what Shirley and I
had. If so, I can't help feeling sad thinking that poor Mr. Allison may
be trapped in there, still doing my work for me.